Structuring policy integration: formal and informal institutions in combating child labor in Türkiye

Abstract

Some contemporary societal challenges span through multiple policy areas, involving numerous policy sectors, actors, and networks of interaction. Such policy problems require public sectors’ attention to formulate policy designs that facilitate collaborative action to effectively intervene in these issues. To equip the policy interventions with necessary tools, policy integration has emerged as an approach that provides a suitable approach to effectively and efficiently address complex societal challenges. The scholarly research has extensively focused on this approach, delving into conceptualization of policy integration and demonstrating the importance of policy integration to address cross-cutting policy challenges. To do so, the scholarly research has mostly analyzed the formal institutions structuring policy integration, but the role informal institutions play remained underexplored despite the key role informal rules play in shaping policy outcomes. Thus, to address this gap, this thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis of the roles formal and informal rules play in structuring policy integration on a cross-cutting policy challenge, namely the child labor in seasonal agriculture in Türkiye. The main rationale behind selection of child labor is that this issue cross-cuts across multiple policy sectors. Another reason is that this issue has been persisting for over a long time despite numerous policy interventions, and it is garnering increasing attention by public sector in Türkiye in recent years. Thus, it provides a fitting example to analyze the role policy integration plays addressing a complex societal challenge with particular focus on both formal and informal institutions. Conducting a comprehensive analysis on formal and informal institutions prevalent in this field, this thesis finds that the formal rules and institutions in this field are somewhat integrated, but policy integration remained considerably weak as a result of the informal rules that conflicts with and filter through the formal ones. Thus, it argues that informal roles play a key role in shaping policy integration and deserves further scholarly attention.